Survival__ Structuring Prosperity for Yourself and the Nation - Charles George Smith [166]
14. Think, plan and act with integrity. Ultimately, our personal integrity is the only value and capital we control entirely. The status quo's intellectual framework which enables and encourages corruption, artifice, misrepresentation, deception, collusion, gaming the system, propaganda, simulacrum, facsimiles and exploitation depends on each of us surrendering our integrity to serve the State/Power Elite's interests, in exchange for a share of the loot.
15. Pare complexity to simplicity. While ESSA (#11) includes "simplify" as a process, the purpose is specifically efficiency and the reduction of wasted energy, labor and capital.
But complexity is not just a wild tangle of inefficiency: Complexity is a weapon, tool and strategy of control and dominance. As noted in a previous chapter, the most effective way to game a system (open a windfall to exploit) is to create layer upon layer of obscure complexity: pension guidelines piled up since 1935 into a thick morass only the gamers claim to understand, tax codes which run into the tens of thousands of pages, regulations so complex only a well-funded fiefdom or corporation has the resources to decode the intent and loopholes, and so on.
As noted in the previous chapter:
Complexity creates information asymmetry--unequal access to information--and opens up vast opportunities for gaming the system. Thus complexity itself is a tool of domination by Elites and the State. Like its conceptual twin transparency, simplicity is the mortal enemy of Elites key weapons of control: secrecy, obfuscation, disinformation, information asymmetry and complexity itself.
Thus the first step in solidifying and concentrating control (and thus power) is to create a complexity fortress of cloaked information guarded by restricted access and specialized knowledge. Once information asymmetry has been institutionalized, transparency is impossible and the gaming (and thus the looting) can begin.
The status quo Elites and high-caste technocrats will defend their institutional information asymmetry and complexity fortresses like life itself because these are the ultimate defense of their privileges, power, control and wealth. The wailing, whining and protests will all boil down to this: simplicity is impossible, complexity is necessary, and so on.
This is disingenuous. The tax code of the U.S.A. could be written on one page. Such simplicity would absolutely destroy all the privileges, loopholes and windfalls the State has constructed to benefit and protect the Power Elites. This is why simplicity is the mortal enemy of power concentrations and the Elites who control the power and national income/wealth.
These fifteen principles are scale-invariant, meaning that they apply to small and large-scale enterprises equally, from households to enterprises to cities to nation-states. These principles apply to everyone, regardless of ethnicity, creed, color or class.
In the next chapters, I will sketch out how the principles can be applied to each of the three levels: household, community/enterprise/network and nation.
Key concepts in this chapter:
Complexity fortress
Chapter Twenty-Five: Applying the Principles
Applying the Principles to Individuals/Households
Let's begin by restating this starting point:
The key point here is that dominance flows directly from an intellectual framework which constructs and justifies that dominance as natural and beneficial to all believers. In this sense consumerism is in effect the de facto state religion of the U.S.A., and it directly benefits the Elites who own or control the vast majority of the nation's financial wealth, income, law-making machinery and productive assets.
For individuals and households, what you decide not to do is as important as what you decide to do. Recognizing the status quo's intellectual framework as a con is the essential